


Inertia

by azurefishnets



Category: Strandbeest - Theo Jansen, Undisclosed Fandom
Genre: Gen, Other, Post-Apocalypse, Worldbuilding, Yuletide 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 10:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27968918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurefishnets/pseuds/azurefishnets
Summary: Wind drives the beest onward as it imbibes and excretes in one elegant action that leaves only momentum and the Knowledge that there is little beyond the Strand.
Relationships: strandbeest/strandbeest/strandbeest/strandbeest/str
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Inertia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



Appendages clack and wriggle, undulating over pebbled ground, seeking only Wind and Current and Light. Wind drives the beest onward as it imbibes and excretes in one elegant action that leaves only momentum and the Knowledge. Current pushes the Wind and pulls at its feet, a constant give-and-take of the world through which it travels. The grey, hazy Light of the sun, although currently shuttered by heavy, dripping clouds, bathes its joints, the photovoltaic cells on its back and sides giving it a little extra power when the Wind fails. It needs so little from its surroundings; it glides alone over the hard Sand near the water with little care for where it treads. The world is bleak and empty around it. Nothing grows; nothing moves. The only life comes from the Wind.

A storm is picking up, the wailing Winds rushing in from the unpredictable Ocean. It was a brisk breeze before; now it is tempestuous as it blows off the sea. The beest stumbles, drawn inland, but its small wings flutter, knocking it the other way, and while all its joints scream, it topples, rolling onto its side. It tries to get up, feebly twisting and turning. It does not feel its wing joints shear and tear, but they rip away and are gone in the next moment. The Wind has taken them for its dance, sacrificed to the Knowledge that this is where the beest dies.

It has been alone for many turnings of the moon now; the others have been long lost to their own explorations, the storms, the embrace of the tides, or assimilation. Alone and yet the remnants of many who came before it, it lies there for a moment, as the Wind sings its song of oncoming destruction. The beest Knows that if it stays here it will be gone, its body scattered to be buried by the Sand or swallowed by the Ocean. It draws in on itself, protecting what it can of its core. Perhaps the Knowledge is fallible, although it can remember no time when that was true. When the storm abates it can salvage itself, perhaps find pieces of those which are gone to rebuild its broken feet, somehow be reborn. That is the way it has always been done; the parts of one generation build another.

It lies there on the beach, buffeted by the rising storm and the Winds as they roll its body back and forth. Its parts are scattering, pieces swallowed by the water or the Sand. It is shredding apart, and although it is incapable of pain, there is, perhaps, some regret there for a life not yet fully lived. It would not choose to cease its existence in this way, although, maybe, it is for the better. It has struggled alone for so long, unable to rebuild the slowly growing damage of its flanks and legs. Its wings have been tattered shreds for many tides. It has outlived all whom it was created by and all of those it might have helped to create will be lost with it. It is the Last, yet still it struggles as the rain drums down all around it, its vibration sensors sensing that it is sinking into the softening Sand.

In another moment, the Sand is pulling away from underneath it, a rip-tide carrying the beest out to sea. A massive wave is coming in, the water already racing through it thrumming with tension, soaking the last remaining dry and delicate interconnections and synapses of its nerves that had been protected by its bulk. The waves rushes by, the crest far overhead, to break on some inner shore. The Current takes the beest. The Strand is forsaken, only water where once pristine Sands had lain for centuries, and the beest is swallowed whole by one greater. The Knowledge of Wind fades, and only the hungry Current, not so much Knowledge as momentum, is left.

* * *

Awareness comes back in faint prickles, the pieces falling into place as the now-humbled Current deposits shards and scraps of itself into a pile and creeps back away again into unknowable places. There is little Light here, but a faint Wind blows through, telling the beest that it has reached a place of respite for the moment. It has never been so discorporate, so utterly undone. It hadn’t remembered, if it ever knew, that pieces of its consciousness resided in the pieces of itself. Those parts it had lost before had been lost without returning, but it can feel the piles of its self all around it, washing in from the Ocean’s maw.

The Wind picks up, driving in from the dark, and other beests trundle or crawl or roll into the space around it. They are impossible. It was the Last, and inertia is claiming it. Yet the solitary beest accepts its fate with equanimity. They will take its pieces and it will become a part of them, and so it will live on, in a way. It is a good death, better than being destroyed and scattered. It lies there, accepting its fate, and is surprised when it does not come. Rather, they creep around it, gathering parts with limbs it does not have. They gather everything they can find, and pile it. It is quite a large pile; the beest was not a small being, even without its wings, and the photovoltaic cells that had made up the bulk of it, and the plates of its back, had somehow all survived and rest there with the other detritus.

It is a painstaking process. The tide comes in and recedes many times, but the beest is never completely alone as they rebuild it, finding and replacing pieces whenever the Wind picks up. It notices they do not seem to understand Light, and none of its photovoltaic cells are put back in place. None of them have a way to process it, to use it, so their movements are often terribly slow. The Wind upon which they all rely is fitful and fickle, but at last, it is able to stand alone and undulate a few faltering feet. The balance is different, without the cells, and they have rebuilt it to look more like them. There are parts of the others there to replace integrities it has lost, but it has the extra limbs now, like they have. It is smaller, to compensate, but it finds itself Knowing that it is more dexterous.

It moves toward the pile of cells in the whispering Wind, but it does not Know how to attach them to itself. These other beests have had their limbs since long before it arrived and they have a mysterious Knowing that seems not to come from the Wind. Willingly, however, the others help it, and slowly, so slowly, they lift, mount, and attach one cell to its back.

With the replacement comes new Knowing. The cells have been taking in Light all this time, although not from the sun. It comes from all around, the fungus of the walls gleaming with soft, oily pearlessence. It spreads throughout the stone of the walls and ceiling, high above, and spatters and drips and grows onto the beests below. Some of them are carpeted with tiny glowing mushrooms, and some have spots and spatters of luminescence. Somehow, the Light they give off gives the beest energy like that it had once received from the sun. More! It capers, moving faster than it had ever managed even on a day with full Light and brisk Winds. It rolls and regains its feet, more sturdy and able than it has ever been, and then, at last, it notices.

The Wind has died. The other beests are still, solemn, unable to move. The Light does not seem to affect them although it is a part of them. Indeed, the beest can feel the Light radiating from them, filling it with energy. The Wind tells it that it can go; it can survive alone now for many more tides in these caves with the Light and even the fickle Wind giving it strength. But it is taking Knowing from one more place now, as it changes. The Light tells it that there is more than survival, more than solitude.

It reaches out, and takes another cell. It drags it to another beest, and attaches it after a long struggle. It can still feel the cell, but it is connected to the other beest now. The Knowledge grows. The two of them attach another to a third beest, and then another. From there they can split apart and, two at a time, the rest of the photovoltaic cells are attached to the rest of the beests. Each time, the Knowledge becomes greater, exponentially growing with each newly remade beest.

They stand, and they Know. They are all one Mind, and yet not. The Light and the Wind grant them the Knowing of the Caves, a Knowing that they are far greater together than the Strand, or the Light, or the Wind. There is a deeper world that waits for them, and so they turn together, into the depths, and seek it, and the new Knowledge that waits there, out.

**Author's Note:**

> "Strands may break alone, but twisted make a braid..." -In the Flame, Darren Korb
> 
> These are, as always, good words and somewhat inspirational for this fic so I thought that should be noted somewhere... I very much enjoyed writing about these Strand-turned-Cavebeests and I hope you enjoyed the reading! Happy YT!


End file.
